


Thou Wilt Have No Peace

by trollopfop (storyinmypocket)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-14
Updated: 2009-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyinmypocket/pseuds/trollopfop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's aware of what happens when angels get too attached to humans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thou Wilt Have No Peace

There are things Castiel doesn't understand. The Lord's final plan, the way humans cling to the most ridiculous bits of God's word while ignoring the greater message... To be honest, he doesn't understand most things about humans. It's safer that way.

He simply accepts these things with his usual solemnity. He doesn't need to understand; he just needs to obey.

_And yet..._

_And yet,_ he can no longer be certain who to obey, or who to trust. _And yet,_ he grows ever closer to Dean Winchester.

_...And yet._

He's aware of what happens when angels get too attached to humans. Azazel was proof of that. There's Falling, and then... There's _Falling._ Falling like Lucifer. Falling like Azazel, who gave humans knowledge they never should have had... And for what? War and fornication, because the Sons of God found the Daughters of Men desirable.

And yet, he understands why. Angels were never meant to choose. They were the perfect servants, and if they never ate from the Tree of Knowledge, it was because they felt no need. They obeyed God's will, and it was good, and what went against God's will was evil. It was enough.

When God's will ceased to matter, good and evil became irrelevant.

_Every sin begins with a choice. The question is whether you can tell when you're making it._

He looks at Dean, and it's the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men all over again -- as much as it was ever a question of _sons_ and _daughters_. Castiel's vessel might be male, but that means nothing. What Castiel is transcends gender, makes physical attraction irrelevant.

_And yet._ Dean Winchester makes him feel in ways that he didn't think possible, undone by a touch of lips -- so soft, where his vessel's lips are rough and chapped. Contact is dangerous, intoxicating. He'd known of certain... inclinations, where his vessel was concerned, known that the man was all the more devout because of those inclinations.

But all the knowledge of the ways in which humans can _touch_ pales next to the experience. And here, he has no one to ask for guidance. The man who once inhabited his vessel has been led to light and bliss, and he can't ask him... Nor would he dare to.

The inhabitants of angels' vessels all move on, drawn to the light that earthbound angels leave for the sake of their duty. No one expects that a vessel will survive the Work; not anymore. He wears the body of a casualty of war, for all that his displacement was prayed for and joyfully accepted. No, he doesn't dare find the man's spirit and ask him, wouldn't dare tell him the uses he had in mind for a body given in such perfect faith.

And the only one he can turn to now is Anafiel -- _Anna_, he reminds himself. She may have taken her old place in the hosts of heaven, but she has yet to take the entirety of her name, and he wouldn't presume to force it on her unwanted.

He's not made to presume, or to dare.

And to speak to Anna would be to admit how close he is to her error, to her Fall... And closer still to an even worse Fall, because if he were to come back as an infant... He would lose Dean. There's only one way to defect from his position without a human rebirth, and that leads him right back to the path of Lucifer and Azazel and Shemhazai, all those who forsook sacred duty and paid the price.

To speak to Anna would be to face the knowledge of what she and Dean did together, to confront a new feeling, a wistful sadness that fills him completely every time he thinks of the two of them taking comfort in each other. Is this jealousy? He's unsure -- in humans, it always seemed an ugly thing, seething, prone to violence of word or deed. This... this is something different.

This is _longing._

He hasn't Fallen yet, despite Dean's lips and hands and the warmth of his body. He hasn't abandoned his Father and his Father's work.

_The first step is to want something for yourself. To want it so strongly and completely that it overrides everything else -- love for the Father, duty to Him, ties to your brothers..._

Just how close is he to that line? How much further will he go?

...And when the time comes, will he cross it? Because if he's certain of anything, it's this one thing -- the time _will_ come. Dean Winchester, their last hope, is being led to his fate like a sacrificial lamb, and even if he doesn't know the outcome, he can guess at probabilities, analyze the patterns that tell him that all they've asked of Dean so far, the things that would make Castiel weep, were he capable... those are only the beginning.

How far can he bear to take Dean along that path?

Yes, Dean Winchester makes him feel in ways that he didn't think possible. Those ways might just be a far more permanent undoing than either of them is prepared for.

On his right hand lies the path he'd thought was his, that of the righteous angel, the servant of the Lord, loving all in his own impartial way. On his left, a vision of a darker Fall than Anafiel ever took, the absolute selfishness that would drive him to possess Dean, one way or the other... To have him and _keep_ him, to make it so he never thinks of another... It's repugnant to him, but he can see it too clearly, see how easily one could... _Stumble._ How easily one could Fall.

He weaves his way between them, tugged this way and that by love, by faith... By lips and warmth and touch, by his brothers dying around him, by doubt and duty.

_Sons of God. Children of Man._

He can't abandon his duty... Nor can he abandon Dean.

There are things Castiel doesn't understand, and now, it would seem he's become one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written near the end of S4, before we learned the details of the angels' plan, or how Jimmy was still hanging around. Obviously, this has been Jossed a bit. I still like my take on angels better.
> 
> This also exists in my Castiel RP journal under a different title. Said title was a Rainer Maria Rilke reference which I decided would be far better for a Dean-PoV fic. Instead, I'm taking from the Book of Enoch; specifically, Enoch's words to Azazel after God got pissy about the angels knocking up nice human girls and teaching them how to make weapons and use magic and wear cosmetics.


End file.
